Hot Flash (9 page)

“Enough of this. Reece, answer me.”

“Reece called? Is she okay?” Dulcey screeched through the phone.

I sank back down into the couch. “I was about to go through the phone. There would have been no way, no how, no place for that girl to escape my reach.” I told Dulcey about the phone call and Laughton's visit. “Dulcey, I need to go to Boston. I'm losing my ever-lovin' mind between Nareece and Laughton and Calvin. . . and these damn hot flashes.” I jumped up and pulled off my robe, as sweat dripped from the tip of my nose. I paced the length of the living room, struggling against losing control and wanting to hit something or someone.

Dulcey jabbered away, “Breathe, girl, deep breaths. Go with the flow, M. Take deep breaths.”

I threw the phone. It hit the wall and landed on the couch in several pieces—the phone, battery, and battery cover. Just as quick as my body had fired up, the cool registered and a chill caught me. I put my robe back on, retrieved the phone, put the pieces back together, then called Dulcey back.

“Are you there?” I said when the ringing stopped but there was no “hello.”

“And you've only just begun, girl. I'm saying you need to learn how to flow with them flashes and feel the power in them,” she said. “I'll make you a recording so you can push Replay whenever you're needin'—”

“Dulcey, shut up. Please. Just shut up.”

“Listen to me, M. When you think you're going to lose your mind and the temperature can't go any higher and you want to just melt and be done, get pissed, girl. Punch something, scream. You'll cool right down and your sense, what little you have”—she cackled, then continued—“will come right back, better than before you lost it.”

“Yeah, except the hotter I get, the more out of control I feel, and Lord only knows what might happen.”

C
HAPTER
9

A
nother week passed before I regained enough strength to travel and Dulcey could clear her client schedule. I called Bates to let him know I was coming. He had called once since I'd asked him to look into Nareece's disappearance, only to say there were no new developments.

On the way out of town, we stopped at the hospital to see Calvin. The nurse at the station said his condition remained unchanged, now three weeks in a coma. Three weeks since someone had tried to kill us.

I stood outside the door unable to move farther until a nurse came and pushed it open. She was on a mission to take his vitals. I stood in the doorway for a bit, then stumbled in behind her and waited for her to finish and leave before I inched up to his bedside. He looked as though he was just sleeping. I mean, there were two jagged lines on his forehead, and a scrape across the bridge of his nose, but his expression was uninhibited. I rubbed my fingers over his forehead and down his cheek. His skin was as smooth and shiny as a sandstone. My heart beat hard and fast. I kissed his stilled lips and his cheek.

Driving through New York took two hours, a drive that really should have taken half that time. Another three hours passed before patches of green with splashes of yellow, pink, and purple streaked by, the backdrop on both sides of the Massachusetts Turnpike. A long winter riddled with record snowstorms had finally given way to spring peeking through. Spring had bloomed all the way twenty years ago when Cap and I had moved Nareece to Boston. The tepid breeze and vibrant colors were even more inviting then, until I almost decided to move with her. Nareece shunned the idea. She said she needed to stand on her own two feet, which was a major contradiction where she was concerned. I thought her being in Boston would give me relief from wondering and having to deal with whatever insanity she managed to find on any given day. Really, her move became a twenty-year, long-distance upbringing, with no vacation from worry for me, until she met John, ten years ago.

“Hmm, not even then,” I said out loud without realizing it, but for Dulcey coming back at me.

“Girl, what you talkin'? I thought you were asleep.”

“No, just thinking. Nareece and her crazy self. Twenty years and still she acts crazy more than she acts sane, and even then you have to wonder if she really does manage to exhibit a lucid moment in her madness. John
has
to love the ground she prances on to put up with her stuff. What is she thinking, leaving those babies?”

“She's not. You and John haven't let her. Every time the child burps, one of you wipes any spittle from her cheeks and then you want to wash her up while you're at it, and dress her up in bows and frills and put her in a bubble lined with cushiony stuff so she won't bump anything or get bruised anywhere.”

Blah, blah, blah
. Sweat beads popped out on her forehead.

I appreciated Dulcey being the devil at my back most times, but sometimes she pushed so hard I could hardly resist the urge to snatch her face off. I was watching her mouth moving fast, spit spraying out every other word, head bobbing up and down, and I was wondering how she was driving with so much other action going on. “You know I'm talkin' true,” she was saying. “You and Reecey need to fix this so everybody can move on.” She looked sideways at me. I glared “
enough
” to her—one eye brow up, the other furrowed, lips sucked to one side.

After about a half hour I entered the Nareece conversation arena once again. Dulcey could be hard to take sometimes, but she was my other half and I needed her mouth to be running, feeding me and helping me find a halfway straight path to follow through this situation.

“I'm really worried about her this time, Dulce. It's been three weeks since I was supposed to go there so we could open the letter.”

“Wait one minute. You mean she still hasn't opened the letter?” Dulcey shook her head in wonder, then went on before I could say anything. “Yeah, I guess not since you been out of commission.”

“She wouldn't open it until I got there and I never got there, and now I don't know where she is or whether or not she has opened it yet. It's been two weeks since I talked to John. He's not answering his phone. Bates says one of the neighbors saw John and the girls a few days ago, so no missing persons there. I don't know what the hell's going on.”

An hour later we checked in to the Crown Plaza at Exit 17. The hotel hangs like a bridge over the Massachusetts Turnpike in Newton. Newton is about fifteen miles west of Boston and twenty minutes from Milton, where John and Nareece live.

When we got to the room, I called John. No answer. We went to the hotel restaurant, Applebee's, and ate, then drove over to the house anyway. The time was 9 p.m. when we left the hotel. Surely they would be home by the time we got there.

I did not know my way around the area well, but I knew my way between the hotel and Nareece's house. I had made the trip at least fifty times in twenty years: Massachusetts Turnpike east to Exit 14, I-95/Route 128, to Route 38N toward Milton, to Canton Avenue, right to Indian Spring Road. On most visits, I stayed with Nareece and John, but some situations warranted separate space.

The neighborhood consisted of a mixture of sprawling homes and medium-sized sprawling homes set on a minimum of three acres each, a pumped-up version of a Stepford Wives community. Yards showcased perfectly shaped trees, manicured lawns, and vibrant flower gardens, despite spring not having sprung to its full potential yet. Nareece and John's house was a medium-sized sprawling colonial set back a ways from the street, the front partly hidden by foliage. John had done well, though I still did not understand exactly what he did. Dulcey pulled into the half-circle driveway and stopped just past the front door. A faint light shone through the large picture window, giving off an eerie aura.

“Spooky,” Dulcey whispered.

“Oh girl, get your scary ass out of the car.” I chuckled with tentative sincerity.

Dulcey got out and came around to my side. “Now this is what I'm talking about,” she said, looking up and down the street and perusing the houses. “Reecey done good for herself. Maybe I'll move here when I retire.”

“Shut up. You've only been out of Philly twice, once on your honeymoon and now. You are never leaving Philly and that's a fact.” We laughed until Dulcey choked. It took a few minutes for her to stop coughing and catch her breath.

“There's a time for everything,” she said, stealing her way up the driveway to the front door. I got to the door first. It stood ajar. I pulled my gun from its holster at my waist and waved Dulcey to get behind me. I pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside, flicking the light switch on in the same movement.

To the left, the cushions of the Italian leather couch and chair, Nareece's prized possessions, were strewn across the floor, along with lamps, papers, and tchotchkes.

I whispered, “Stay put, Dulcey,” which was a waste of breath. Dulcey followed me step for step as I searched each room, then went upstairs.

At the top of the stairs to the right, John and Nareece's bedroom door creaked open with a light touch. Everything seemed to be in its place. I tiptoed down the hall to the twins' room.

He charged out the door at us like a bull, knocking me back and causing my gun to fire. Dulcey swung and landed a punch, knocking the man against the wall. He pushed her back and ran for the stairs, as Dulcey flipped sideways over the railing. I reached out and caught her arm, holding on for about three seconds before my grip slipped, and she fell to the stairs below, barely missing falling on the man, who fled through the open front door to the outside. She tumbled down the stairs like a rag doll, flipped head over body once, and landed at the bottom spread-eagle.

I almost fell down the stairs on top of her, trying to reach her. She waved me away to the chase. I ran outside, but he was gone. I returned to Dulcey, who was struggling to get up.

“I'm going to feel this for the rest of my natural life,” she moaned. She was bent over, massaging her lower spine with one hand, while I held the other and guided her to the couch. She twisted her neck around until it cracked. I shuddered at the bone-breaking sound.

She held my arm to brace herself and eased back to lie down on the couch. I picked up a lamp from the floor and placed it on the end table for light. The
creak
of the front door made me spin around and draw my gun toward the intruder.

“Freeze! Police!” an officer yelled.

Dulcey popped up and hollered from the pain the sudden movement caused. I lowered my gun, set it on the floor, and raised my arms, slowly, against the fear of an edgy trigger finger. Bates marched in behind several police officers.

“Well, well. Police come running to gunfire in this neighborhood,” I said, lowering my arms.

Bates signaled the officers to lower their weapons. “I was heading home and heard the ten-eleven for this address,” he said. He did a one-eighty and ordered the four officers with him to check the house for more intruders. “Anybody else home?”

“No. The door was open when we arrived. Caught one of them in the act, but didn't get a good look at him. He was black, bald, about six-one, two-twenty, dark blue hoodie, black sneakers, gloves, nothing specific.”

“For this neighborhood, that's specific.”

An officer came into the room, holstering his weapon. “Place is clear, sir. Should I get a bus for the lady?” he said, gesturing toward Dulcey.

From a reclined position, Dulcey waved the offer away. “I know I'm gonna have a mother of a bruise and be sore as heck, but no, thank you. Nothing's broken.”

“I'll take over from here,” Bates said. The officers cleared the house, and the army of police cars left the neighborhood as fast as they had come. I was closing the door when Mrs. Crowley stuck her hand in to stop me. Mrs. Crowley was a munchkin, about four and a half feet tall, a female black version of Mr. Kim. I smiled at the thought. Mrs. Bourgeoisie with a capital
B
.

“Is everything all right? I heard gunshots and called the police,” she squeaked, ducking under my extended arm to gain entry. “Another break-in, huh? I haven't seen John and the girls around for a bit. The good Lord only knows what would have happened if they had been home.” She marched up to Bates and extended her arm for a handshake. “Carolyn Crowley.”

“Detective Bates. You said ‘another break-in.' Have there been other break-ins in the neighborhood?”

“No, no, only here. I saw two men looking around outside the house about three days ago. I called, but no police came. They were two black men. They didn't get in, however.”

“How do you know?”

Giving Bates a twisted look, she snarled, “I watched until they left. I had hoped the police would come before then.” Bourgeoisie got ghetto.

“Mrs. Crowley, do you know John's whereabouts?” I asked.

“Where John and the girls are? Oh, my dear, they've been gone for a week or more, I would say. John came back Wednesday late afternoon and left again on Thursday about the same time, three o'clock. I don't stay in people's business, so I couldn't tell you where they went.” She stretched her neck to take in more of the house, then she began flitting around like a stray bullet bouncing off surfaces until it finds a penetration point. “That poor man, he can't handle this mess and the girls, too,” she said, picking up a lamp and setting it on the other end table.

“But do you know where they went?”

“No. But they might be at John's mother's house in Watertown, no Newton, she lives in Newton. Yes. Lovely lady. Ama, I think her name is. The girls call her Ba, or something like that. It means ‘grandmother' in Vietnamese. I met Ama when she came to visit a few months ago, I think it was.”